Posted below is the roundtable interview with Amanda Bynes and Elijah Kelley. They talk about playing an interracial couple, working with John Travolta and all the other big actors in the movie, what they have coming up and a ton of other stuff.

But before getting to the interview… here is the synopsis of the film:

Tracy Turnblad, a big girl with big hair and an even bigger heart, has only one passion – dancing.  Her dream is to appear on “The Corny Collins Show,” Baltimore’s hippest dance party on TV. Tracy (Nikki Blonsky) seems a natural fit for the show except for one not-so-little problem – she doesn’t fit in.  Her plus-sized figure has always set her apart from the cool crowd, which she is reminded of by her loving but overly protective plus-sized mother, Edna (John Travolta). That doesn’t stop Tracy because if there is one thing that this girl knows, it’s that she was born to dance. As her father Wilbur (Christopher Walken) tells her, “Go for it! You’ve got to think big to be big.”

After wowing Corny Collins (James Marsden) at her high school dance, Tracy wins a spot on his show and becomes an instant on-air sensation, much to the chagrin of the show’s reigning princess, Amber Von Tussle (Brittany Snow), and her scheming mother, Velma (Michelle Pfeiffer), who runs television station WYZT.  Even worse for Amber is the fact that it’s not just the audience who loves the new girl in town; Amber’s sweetheart, Link Larkin (Zac Efron), seems to be smitten with Tracy’s charms as well.  This dance party gets personal as a bitter feud erupts between the girls as they compete for the coveted “Miss Teenage Hairspray” crown.

At school, however, a short stint in detention and raised-eyebrows caused by the budding relationship between her best friend Penny Pingleton (Amanda Bynes) and Seaweed (Elijah Kelley) opens Tracy’s eyes to a bigger issue than the latest dance craze or the coolest hairdo – racial inequality. Throwing caution to the wind, she leads a march with Motormouth Maybelle (Queen Latifah) to fight for integration and winds up with an arrest warrant instead. Tracy is on the lam now and goes underground – literally – to her best friend Penny’s basement. 

Has Tracy’s luck finally run out?  Will she miss the final dance-off against Amber and forfeit the title of “Miss Hairspray,” or will she sing and dance her way out of trouble again? 

When big hair meets big dreams anything can happen – and does – in this high-energy comedy that proves you don’t have to fit in to win.

As always, you can download the audio of the roundtable interview by clicking here. It’s an MP3 and easily placed on a portable player.

“Hairspray” opens on July 20^th.

Can each of you talk about getting involved with this movie?

Amanda Bynes: I feel like all of young Hollywood wanted to be in this movie so we were just blessed to be the ones who they felt were right for the role.

Elijah Kelley:  My mortgage was due, that’s why I did this.   I needed to pay my mortgage. 

Amanda: I’ll speak for myself then.

Elijah:  But, no, these are parts and opportunities that literally, when it hit the fan, everybody wanted a crack at this movie.  They were really going for all the heavy hitters. With people like John Travolta and Michelle and Queen and all those guys, it was just a really amazing thing and to pass it up would be the most craziest thing you could do in your life.

Amanda, can you talk about creating that character?  She’s just such a wonderful, innocent…

Elijah:  Well, that’s what you say [laughter].

Talk about finding that rhythm of playing her.  

Amanda: It was funny.  I talked to Adam [Shankman] about the fact that it was the most pulled back I’ve ever been in a movie because I’ve been a man in one and I’ve done Nickelodeon where I’ve been many characters; very goofy.  So, for this movie, I had to sort of pull back and be kind of quiet and sort of be the observer which was actually kind of fun for me and different.  This was the type of movie I want to be in which is a movie with the heavy hitters and the veterans who I hope to, one day, be like.  So, for me, I just wanted to do my best.  I was game every day to just be the best Penny I could be.  And, a lot of times, when I do a role, I think, ‘what if someone else was playing this role?’ and, if I was watching it, ‘how would I do it better?’ So I’d kind of go in there and just do the best I could do.  And, as far as the transition goes, it was kind of like me, in that she’s growing into a woman.  I felt kind of shy at the beginning.  It’s like all these people I don’t know and, in the end, you get kind of comfortable and speak your mind.

I wondered if you are sick of lollipops yet?

Amanda:  I am.  Those were the cherry kind.  Now I like watermelon.  So, I’m sick of cherry but I like watermelon.  No, I’m sick of those too.

Elijah, how did you get the role?

Elijah:  I heard they were going at a lot of the R&B and pop stars that are out right now.  It was a blessing.  I was fortunate enough to slip into the cracks.  I wasn’t known.  I wasn’t this big, huge, gigantic star.  I just work hard at it.  I do the old grind work.  Got in to do my thing.  I feel like, if I wasn’t able to have done this movie, I don’t think my career would have started the way I wanted it to.  How many times do you get to get on a platform where you’re able to exploit all your talents? That was so fortunate for me and it does not hurt the process of me finding girls [laughter].

Can you talk about the rehearsal process for this?

Elijah:  We had about a month and a half of just straight dancing and singing.  We did not see a camera for about two months.  That was amazing but we said a lot of times that it was like summer camp because you have so many great dancers.  I mean dancers who’ve danced for Beyonce and Britney and Justin Timberlake;  all these people.  They’re like the all-stars of what they do.  To sit there and have a bunch of creative energy whether it’s acting, singing or dancing, that was just something.  A lot of times, it didn’t feel like work.  It was just so much fun.

On the credits it doesn’t say you did much dancing. It’s more singing and acting.   If you aren’t a trained dancer, I’m shocked.

Elijah: I can move but I’ve never background danced for anybody.  I’ve never been in stuff like that.

But that split thing….

Elijah: [laughs] I know. There’s a lady named Angela Radcliffe in my hometown in Georgia and she had this dance studio and I danced for one summer because of this girl I liked and I was like freakin’.  I forget how old I was, probably eleven and I took this class just to meet this girl and I went on to do a whole summer and we won trophies and stuff like this but it was kiddie dance in sparkly suits. When I found out what sparkly really looks like, I burned ‘um all but that was the only time.  In high school, we did chorus and stuff like that but I’ve never taken professional classes and stuff like that.  It’s a God-given gift. 

Everyone must have been exhausted making this film but did the young cast get to hang out off set?

Amanda:  We did.  It’s kind of like being stuck with a group of people in a hotel in a new place.  It’s Toronto and none of us live there so we would get together and go eat or go to movies.

The movie portrays you two in an interracial relationship.  Were you concerned about that?

Amanda: Not really. To us, that’s so not even an issue that’s real in our minds anymore.  I know that some people may feel that way but, for me, I grew up on a show called “All That” which was a mix of Black and White people and we were just people.  I had crush on and had a kiss with an African-American kid when I was eleven and, to me, I didn’t see it as anything other than the boy I liked.  It wasn’t anything to me.

Elijah:  Yeah and then we met back up later in life.

Amanda:  Yeah, who knew that we’d work together again.

Elijah:  She grew up in California and I grew up in Georgia which was kind of a different experience; Georgia being one of the last to jump on the bandwagon of the integration frontier.  My grandparents and my mother and father, they caught some of that stuff and they were able to give me firsthand accounts and experiences that they had.  I was in awe of some of the stuff they were telling me. A lot of things happened that I think our generation are particularly blind to and don’t get to see a lot of, especially here in L.A. It’s a little bit more liberated in dating and sexual preference and all that stuff.  But it’s definitely an awakening to our generation to move forward and more further from what that was. Somebody said their twelve-year-old kid saw the movie and got really sad and said ‘are you serious? That’s really what happened?  That’s not cool’.

Amanda:  It’s kind of a history lesson in a way and it’s also nice that it has John Travolta and the big stars so that it’s like the people who know are dealing with an issue that people don’t really talk about.  It’s kind of nice to have them do it in a funny way.

What is the most unusual thing you have in your trailer?

Elijah: The dress from Amanda’s last scene, the finale, I have that in my trailer and John Travolta’s fat suit was in my trailer.  I like to lay with it. [laughter].

Amanda:  I don’t know why.  It’s very odd.

Did you grope him by any chance?

Eljiah: Actually, when they were making the suit, I felt strange groping him because I felt stupid.  There was a man under there so I was hesitant to do that but when they were making it in the make-up trailer…

Amanda: The weird thing in my trailer. I don’t think it’s weird but I always have Dumb and Dumber playing on my TV because I just think it’s the funniest movie and, for some reason, I have that on constantly.  I just think it’s very inspiring comedically and, besides that, I would say sometimes fan mail and snacks.

Elijah:  Did you get my letter?

Amanda:  No. And I don’t know why you have my dress. That freaks me out. [laughter].

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